1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and control method thereof, and a program, which set a font used for a new input character when the character is input into a character string in which font information is set for each character.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, print service providers who generate printed materials according to requests from customers such as personal users, enterprises, and the like exist. Such print service provider provides services for creating printed materials by receiving print data (master copy) and instructions of a print style, the number of copies, due date, and the like from a customer, and delivering the printed materials. Such print service providers provide services using large-scale printers such as conventionally known offset reproduction printing presses and the like.
On the other hand, recently, electrophotographic printers and ink-jet printers have been speeded up and have gained high image quality. Along with such trend, a business category of commercial printing (print service) called “copy service”, “printing service”, “Print On Demand (POD) center”, and the like, which allow quick output and delivery, exist.
A print request to such printing business is made from the user to a print service provider who provides the aforementioned print services. More specifically, the user sends by mail or directly brings, to a printing company, documents recorded on paper sheets or a digital medium (FD, MO, CD-ROM, or the like) and a print instruction (order instruction) that describes the number of copies to be printed, bookbinding method, due date, and the like of the documents (document reception).
Also, a printing system which can place or receive a print order and receive documents online via the Internet or intranet has come into practical use. The print service provider side prepares a print instruction upon reception of a request from the user. The print service provider prints and binds works using a printer connected to a work computer in accordance with the print instruction, and delivers created printed materials to a customer, thus completing the service.
The print service provider who executes print processing commissioned from the user must safely complete printing with stable quality until the designated due date. For this purpose, the print service provider makes a plurality of operators serially process a large number of print requests (orders) using a wide variety of printers and hosts in parallel.
It is demanded to smoothly and surely process respective work processes, and to use human (operators who are assigned works) and hardware resources as efficiently as possible. As a result, making and managing a plan (schedule) with high work efficiency in consideration of the due dates and cost is important.
In the prior art, there exists a workflow, based on the divisions of labor, which designates only the font type without executing font embedding processing in a pre-process such as a document layout, print settings, and the like, and executes embedding of font and creation of print data in a post-process such as print execution, and the like.
In this case, a work PC for the pre-process (e.g., a PC of an operator in charge of the pre-process) is different from that for the post-process (e.g., a PC of an operator in charge of the post-process), and these two work PCs may be installed with different types of fonts. For example, when the operator makes font settings and print settings for characters at the work PC for the pre-process with no regard to fonts installed in the work PC for the post-process, the work PC for the post-process does not have the corresponding fonts. For this reason, upon embedding fonts and creating print data in the post-process, the operator cannot proceed with the processing, thus causing an error. If an error has occurred, the workflow must return to the pre-process, and the operator must redo works such as font setting change, and the like, resulting in poor efficiency.
Recently, in order to solve this problem, the following system has been proposed (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-91957). That is, the system has an arrangement which allows a system of the work PC for the pre-process to acquire embeddable font information installed in the work PC for the post-process upon making the print settings (font settings and the like) in the pre-process. Then, the work PC for the pre-process displays information of only embeddable fonts installed in the work PC for the post-process, and prompts the operator to select fonts so as to complete the embedding processing, thereby preventing the post-process from causing any errors.
In the conventional system and workflow, if the print service provider finds wrong or missing characters in a document, and if the system is installed with a font used for a character and character string to be edited (added), the print service provider can take a measure (editing and font embedding).
Note that the character and character string to be edited (added) will be simply referred to as a character hereinafter in some cases.
An operation example upon adding the character will be described below using FIGS. 23A to 23F.
FIGS. 23A to 23C show an example in which  is missing, resulting in  When the system is installed with the corresponding font,  is inserted (added) to correct  to an original character string  Then, a font common to the character string (the same font as  (POP type)) is appropriately embedded to execute print processing.
FIGS. 23D to 23F show an example in which a letter “e” is missing, resulting in “Rd”. If the system is installed with the corresponding font, “e” is inserted (added) to correct “Rd” to an original character string “Red”, and a font common to the character string (the same font as “Rd” (Arial)) is appropriately embedded to execute print processing.
However, in case of a font which is not installed in the system, it is impossible for the print service provider to apply correction (font embedding) in a form that keeps high print quality. FIGS. 24A to 24C show an example in which  is missing, resulting in  as in FIGS. 23A to 23C. In this example, however, the system is not installed with the corresponding font. It is possible to insert (add)  to correct  to an original character string  However, an appropriate font (the same font as  and  (POP type)) corresponding to that character string cannot be embedded. FIGS. 24D to 24F show an example in which alphabet “e” is missing, resulting in “Rd”, as in FIGS. 23D to 23F. similar to the previous example, these figures show a case in which the system is not installed with the corresponding font. It is possible to insert (add) “e” to correct “Rd” to an original character string “Red”. However, an appropriate font (the same font as “Rd” (Arial)) corresponding to that character string cannot be embedded.
Hence, FIGS. 24A to 24F adopt processing for embedding a font similar to that of characters before and after the character to be inserted (added). In this case, print processing is done using inconsistent fonts. For example, in case of the example of FIG. 24A, the font of  and  is “POP type”, but  to be inserted adopts “Kaku Gothic” as a font similar to “POP type”.
In such a case, the print service provider requests the request source to correct and re-send the document to maintain print quality. As a result, the print service provider spends unscheduled time until re-reception of the document, and need to change and adjust plans (schedules) including other related jobs. Also, the work of the operator is interrupted.
In this way, the overall work efficiency drops considerably, and the due date cannot be met in the worst case.
In order to solve inconsistency of the fonts, the fonts of characters within an arbitrary range are re-set to a substitute font. More specifically, when only  of the character string  in FIGS. 24A to 24C has a different font, the operator manually selects the character string  re-sets the entire character string  to an identical font using a dialog shown in FIG. 25, and embeds that font. Likewise, when only “e” of the character string “Red” in FIG. 24D has a different font, the operator manually selects the character string “Red”, re-sets the entire character string “Red” to an identical font using the dialog shown in FIG. 25, and embeds that font.
In this manner, as shown in FIGS. 26A to 26C, the character string  is set to have a common font. Also, as shown in FIGS. 26D to 26F, the character string “Red” is set to have a common font. However, in this case, since the operator must manually designate the character range to be changed, and designate a font to be changed, he or she must do an extra work. If there is a plurality of character strings to be changed, the work efficiency further drops.
Since the operator makes decisions about designation of the character range to be changed (whether or not characters are appropriate) and designation of a font to be changed (similarity of fonts) with given knowledge, it is difficult to maintain consistency about designation of substitute fonts among a plurality of operators.
As described above, the work efficiency of each operator drops, and each operator is required to have knowledge and skill.